Black Friday is an essential highlight in the brand marketing calendar. Every year, more than 70% of consumers say they make purchases on this occasion, taking advantage of the exceptional promotions offered by retailers.

Imported from the United States this trade festival is becoming increasingly popular in France and abroad..
Il est donc très pertinent pour les marques de se positionner sur ce temps fort et de créer une stratégie marketing Black Friday efficace, qui leur permettra de recruter et convertir de nouveaux clients.

In this article, we take a look back at the main issues that companies need to prepare for in order to succeed with their Black Friday marketing campaigns. We also share some effective and original ideas to boost sales and prepare offers for the festive season.

SUMMARY

• The marketing challenges of Black Friday
• 3 marketing campaign ideas to boost sales during Black Friday

Black Friday is no ordinary trade fair. It offers companies a unique opportunity to hire new prospects and re-engage their existing customers (in the same way as sales). But the special feature of the Black Friday is that is takes place at a particularly strategic time of year.

It is indeed the last weekend of november the final stretch before Christmas shopping. Generally speaking, the 4th quarter of the year (the months of October/November/September) is a strategic time for companies, who generate 20 to 30% of their annual sales during this period.

Black Friday’s marketing challenges are therefore unique and brands have the opportunity to implement a strategy that will enable them to target the following four marketing objectives.

Stand out from the competition

An increasing number of companies are offering Black Friday deals. Brands must therefore redouble their efforts to make their campaign visible to their target audience

To capture attention, they won’t be able to rely solely on exceptional discounts (if they want to control the ROI of their Black Frday campaign). They’ll have to rely on other levers of visibility, such as originality and interactivity. Companies can set themselves apart by organizing a marketing competition, for example.

Engaging consumers at the right time

Brands are tending to communicate their Black Friday offers earlier and earlier. By spacing out their marketing campaign over several days, or even weeks, they can create a teasing effect and better manage consumer expectations .

Its also an effective approach to staying top of mind the big dayand guide shoppers more effectively towards the offers/products that best meet their expectations. The key is to strike the right balance to avoid advertising fatigue (and audience fatigue) by offering a variety of advertising formats that maintain engagement right through to Black Friday. A multi-channel approach will also be essential to reach consumers wherever they are.

Propose relevant offers based on customer preferences

To convert, Black Friday marketing campaigns can’t just play on discount percentages. They can also precisely target consumers’ product preferences, offering them a recommendation of items or services they are more likely to want to buy.

This means collecting, in advance of Black Friday, relevant customer data on favorite product categories, but also on the marketing channels, payment methods and delivery options that buyers intend to prioritize. To achieve this, brands can rely on marketing games such as Battle or Gift Finder.

Collect opt-ins and build loyalty to boost repeat purchases

As we’ve already mentioned, Black Friday is the start of a particularly intense period for consumers..
La fête commerciale se déroule en effet juste avant le Cyber Monday (qui a lieu le lundi suivant) et Noël.

To boost sales throughout this period, it’s very important that brands take advantage of Black Friday to collect opt-ins. Black Friday marketing formats can be used to this end (via a simple opt-in form, for example).

Brands can also take advantage of this opportunity to continue collecting customer preference (with a survey or swiper, for example), to optimize future campaigns. They can also encourage engaged prospects to create a customer account or download their application to boost their re-purchase rate for the rest of the year.

Gamification is a relevant lever for meeting the challenges of a Black Friday marketing strategy.

Depending on the brand’s objectives, these interactive and entertaining formats can help to achieve the following goals:

• Recruit qualified leads and optins to develop your customer database;
• Engage existing customers using games to showcase products and support promotions
• Increase sales by encouraging consumers to make a purchase in-store or on the e-commerce site.

1. Recruter des leads avec un instant gagnant

Simple mechanics such as Instants Gagnants are ideal for recruiting new leads and collecting optin. before or during Black Friday. Red By SNCF, for example, relied on the One-armed Bandit to boost the visibility of its Black Friday campaign.

The very simple principle of the game (aligning three identical patterns to unlock a gift or discount) is indeed perfect for engaging a wide audience. Prospects are also attracted by the prospect of finding out immediately whether they’ve won a reward or not.

What’s more, the interactive, fun aspect of this Black Friday marketing campaign helped the operator stand out at this particularly busy time of year.

2. Engage your community during Black Friday with a Shopping List

To engage existing customers during Black Friday, brands can rely on gamification mechanics highlighting their products. The idea here is to discover its offer in a fun way, the aim is also to collect customer preferences in order to offer more targeted product recommendations. The challenge is also to offer attractive prizes that capture the audience’s attention and make them want to participate.

Git, for example, offered its community the chance to win an exceptional basket made up exclusively of items that participants had already selected using a shopping list..
Pendant toute la semaine précédant le Black Friday, les acheteurs pouvaient ainsi tenter leur chance et remporter leur wishlist au tirage au sort.

3. Boost Black Friday sales with coupons

For Black Friday marketing campaigns to bear fruit, brands need to find effective levers to redirect their audience to their website (or in-store for a drive-to-store campaign).

Oui SNCF, for example, took advantage of its Black Friday gamification campaign (a one-armed bandit) to distribute 15-euro e-coupons. Participants could then win a voucher, to be used on the company’s website or app for their next booking.

With more than 2K clicks driven to its site, Oui SNCF boosted sales over the period..
Mais en plus de générer du CA pour le Black Friday, l’entreprise en a aussi profité pour collecter des adresses emails et des optins afin d’enrichir son CRM.

Conclusion

Gamification is one of the most effective strategies for creating an impactful marketing campaign. By choosing a playful, interactive mechanism to animate your audience, you can not only present your discounts more effectively, but also significantly boost your sales. Discover our catalog of playable formats to boost your Black Friday marketing strategy.

With the explosion of e-commerce and digital marketing, one of the main challenges facing retail brands is to encourage their online prospects to visit their stores. Among the most effective marketing levers is e-couponing, or the distribution of discount coupons and vouchers.

By digitizing coupons, brands can indeed boost their sales not only online, but also in their physical points of sale. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the main benefits of e-coupongong, particularly in terms of converting and building loyalty, increasing in-store traffic and maximizing ROI.

We’ll also introduce you to a particularly effective gamified format for distributing coupons to your audience: the 100% instant win game.

SUMMARY

• What is web couponing
• Why opt for e-couponing?
• Organize a 100% winning game to give away discount coupons

Web couponing (or e-couponing) is quite simply the digital equivalent of the classic discount coupon. Rather than distributing paper coupons (after a checkout, via a catalog or by mail), brands can now digitalize their couponing.

Coupons can take many forms, such as a QR code or a barcode. It can also be printable, distributed via email or in the form of mobile coupons (known as m-couponing). The discount code is sent directly by SMS or MMS to the customer’s phone, or via the brand’s application.

Lake any discount coupon, the main aim of this lever is to encourage consumers to make a purchase, buy more or buy again from the company.

While digital coupons were originally used mainly by e-retailers to offer their customers a digital alternative, web couponing is now a popular tool in retail. It enables brands to increase traffic, boost sales in their physical stores ad build customer loyalty. It has thus become a highly effective web-to-store lever.

At the checkout, customers with a digital coupon simply present the QR code or barcode. The discount is applied immediately at the checkout via the store’s computer system. It can also be used online (in which case it takes the form of a unique discount code).

Web couponing offers many advantages for brands. Before implementing a strategy, it’s worth understanding what results a company can expect when distributing digital coupons to its audiences.

1. Acquire new customers

Offering discount coupons, whether digital or paper, is always a good way to attract new customers. For example, the brand can offer exclusive discounts valid only on a first purchase. it can also send a promotional code when a customer subscribes to its newsletter thus collecting opt-ins). But in general, the opportunity to take advantage of a discount can convince prospects who have never purchased from the company to place a first order.

2. Boost in-store traffic

A recent study conducted by CPA revealed that over 90% of Internet users say they are ready to use a discount voucher found online. to make a purchase in a physical store. Offering digital coupons is therefore an excellent way of increasing in-store traffic and converting online-activated prospects into retail customers.

To maximise its drive-to-store strategy, the brand can offer coupons that are only valid in-store, or only on offers available at its points of sale.

3. Build customer loyalty and increase repurchase rates

Coupons can also be an effective way of rewarding loyal customers.. Il incitera ainsi les consommateurs à revenir en magasin ou à racheter auprès de la marque. Le bon de réduction peut ainsi être intégré au programme de fidélité de l’entreprise, ou envoyé par SMS à une période stratégique du calendrier marketing (black friday, fêtes de fin d’année, etc.)

To make the most of the loyalty-building benefits of coupons, the key is to personalize campaigns. The brand can, for example, distribute discounts on customers’ birhtdays or when they reach a new level in their loyalty program.

4. better track and maximize campaign ROI

Measuring the performance of retail campaigns can be more complex. Couponing enables brands to better target their efforts and track their ROI in-store, as each coupon can be encoded in the checkout system.

this marketing strategy is therefore agile and easy to implement than printing and distributing paper coupons. Companies can therefore test different approaches more quickly (triggers for distributing a new coupon, for loyal customers for example, discount amounts, etc.).

After analyzing the results of each A/B testing campaign, companies can adjust their strategy and maximize their results.

5. Increase your customer’s average shopping basket

A survey carried out by LH2 reveals that 67% of French consumers have already added a product to their basket in order to take advantage of a discount. 25% have even postponed a purchase in order to use a discount coupon.

E-couponing is therefore an excellent way to increase the average shopping basket of in-store shoppers (both physical and digital).

6. adopt more ethical maketing

One of the main disadvantages of physical coupons is that they are printed on paper. Even if it is printable (for people who don’t have smartphones, for example), the e-couponing allows you to reduce your brand’s ecological footprint and adopt a more eco-responsible approach.

6. Improve your shopping experience

It’s also a good way to improve the customer experience by avoiding the risk of customers losing or forgetting their discount voucher before going to the store. Coupons can be accessed anytime, anywhere. Companies can even send reminders by SMS, email or via a notification on their app to ensure that consumers dont miss their disocunt deadline.

To achieve these results, however, the company must identify effective levers for distributing its coupons to the right people. It can, for example, rely on its application or loyalty program to achieve loyalty and average basket increase objectives. Gamification and the organization of competitions will be more effective in attracting and converting new prospects.

Marketing games, broadcast on social networks or in the form of pop-ups on your online/in-app store, are excellent levers for spreading an e-couponing campaign. This is particularly true for instant wins, which enable participants to find out immediately whether or not they’ve won a gift (and the nature of the reward).

As part of a web couponing strategy, the brand can even opt for a 100% winning competition. As the name suggests, this mechanism promises all participants the chance to win a prize. The prospect will be able to launch a wheel of fortune or play the one-armed bandit and find out how much your discount will be (-30, 40 or 50%, for example).

Showroomprive & Rituals example

Showroomprivé’s strategy for boosting engagement and sales of the Ritual brand on its app. In this in-app game, participants were invited, through a Flip&Win, to choose their favorite product. After clicking on it, they automatically received a voucher to be used on any order over 45 euros.

In addition to boosting the conversion rate of its campaign and increasing the average shopping basket, this 100% winning game was also an excellent way of collecting customer preference and promoting products.

Conclusion

Launch a 100% winning game with instant win contests to boost your e-couponing strategy and achieve the results your brand has set itself (conversion, loyalty, customer knowledge, etc.) Easily organize your own instant win campaign thanks to our interactive mechanics!

If you’re looking to raise awareness of your brand while increasing sales and expanding your audience, co-branding is a relevant marketing strategy. Partnerships are an excellent way of reaching a wider audience.

By teaming up strategically with other brands, companies can broaden their commercial offering and capitalise on their partner’s visibility to boost their own brand awareness.

Co-branding has many advantages. But it is important to master this marketing strategy well before taking the plunge, to avoid associating your image with a brand that is not aligned with your values or that does not address a strategic market for your company.

In this article, we share with you some practical tips for increasing your target audience through a co-branding campaign.

SUMMARY

• What is co-branding?
• What are the advantages of co-branding for a company?
• Boosting the effectiveness of a co-branding campaign through gamification
• 4 tips for a successful co-branding campaign

Co-branding, or brand partnership, is a marketing strategy that involves teaming up with another brand to promote or co-create a product or a service. This does not mean simply associating the names of two brands on an item. A co-branding partnership combines the resources, identities and stories of each partner to create an exclusive offering.

Co-branding means sharing resources and expertise, but also sharing your community of clients. The aim is for each partner to benefit from the strategic advantages of the other. This may involve a wider audience in general, or a new market that the company wishes to conquer in particular. But co-branding can also facilitate the transfer of technology and know-how.

Co-branding offers a number of advantages for all the partners involved. This type of partnership enables each player to benefit from the strengths of the other company, particularly in terms of :

• Reaching a wider audience. Brand partnerships enable companies to increase the exposure of their brand to their partner’s customers. A co-branding campaign can be broadcast across both companies’ communication channels (physical and digital).
• Engage a new audience and increase sales. Consumers are more likely to trust recommendations from a brand they know well and have been buying from for several years.
• Boost brand awareness and credibility. Establishing a brand partnership with a recognised player allows the company to strengthen its own credibility not only with its current audience, but also with its target audience. For example, a street-wear brand teaming up with a luxury brand will significantly upgrade its brand image. Its products will be perceived (by its community and high-end customers) as being of higher quality. This could lead to an increase in pricing, and therefore profitability.
• Reduce the risks and costs of a marketing campaign. Developing a new product or service, entering a new market or launching a new activity can be risky for a company. Joining forces with a brand that is already present in this market or that has long experience in this new vertical reduces the commercial risks. All the more so since, as we have seen, this type of partnership involves pooling resources. The companies will therefore be pooling their costs, which reduces the budget they would have to invest in this new project.

The aim of a co-branding campaign is therefore to increase an audience, or even to develop a new audience (with a persona not previously targeted by the company).

This marketing strategy in itself makes it possible to achieve this objective by multiplying the communication channels. Indeed, the campaign can be disseminated by both partners (publication on social networks, emailing, display format on their respective websites or in their physical shops, etc.).

However, partners can boost the effectiveness of their co-branding strategy by making their marketing campaign fun and interactive through gamification.

By integrating interactivity into their co-branding campaign, the two partner brands can more easily capture the attention of their respective communities and engage their customers. The fun mechanics of the game and the chance to win a reward will set them apart from other promotional content.

The marketing game can be used to help people discover the co-created product in a more entertaining way (via a quizIt can also tease its launch and optimise consumer expectations by offering them the chance to win free products via a competition or instant win (scratch cards, one-armed bandit). Le jeu permet aussi de faire gagner un produit de la marque partenaire pour booster la notoriété de celle-ci en s’appuyant sur la première.

Examples of gamified co-branding campaigns

The famous drinks brand Coca Cola is a master of the art of co-branding. The company uses this strategy to develop its audience and increase sales.

For example, it has teamed up with fruit juice brand Capri Sun to convert new customers. Its co-branded game campaign incorporated a proof-of-purchase mechanism into its prize draw form in order to boost its conversion rate and increase sales. In addition to the co-branded aspect of the campaign, the choice of an attractive prize (an iPhone) helped convert more than 5,000 visitors.

Coca-Cola has also developed a co-branding marketing campaign with energy drink brand Monster. Here again, the mechanic used was to upload a proof of purchase to access the game in order to generate more sales. As the two brands’ universes are more similar, this campaign had a participation rate of 75% and over 1,000 visits.

Before embarking on co-branding, it is important to consider the right factors to choose a relevant partner that will enable the brand to achieve its objectives.

• Target markets. The most important thing is to make sure that your target audience and that of the brand with which you are planning to partner overlap. The partnership will not work if the companies are both targeting extremely different audiences or, conversely, if they are too similar.
• Brand image. The personalities and worlds of the two brands must be compatible. The partners must share common and complementary values, at the risk of losing or alienating their community.
• Market needs. A co-branding campaign must also respond, to a certain extent, to a market need. This partnership can enable the brand to address a need of its audience that it has not yet met.
• Adapting the mechanics of your marketing game to the challenges of co-branding. In particular, this means choosing a prize that reflects the two brand universes. It also means announcing the winners on their respective channels, or providing an opt-in for the partner brand, etc.

Once the company has found the right partner, it is crucial to define everyone’s roles and responsibilities in the roll-out of the co-branding campaign. To achieve this, it is important to be able to count on a reliable and transparent partner who will contribute equally to the project.

Conclusion

Gamification is an excellent way of boosting the impact of a co-branding campaign. It will boost your brand’s reputation and its ability to develop a new audience. Discover our interactive competition mechanics to make your campaigns even more engaging and convert these new prospects more effectively!

In-app purchases, i.e. directly from a mobile application, has become a major trend among consumers. They are 74% say they use mobile applications with the main intention of making a purchase. Mobile purchases also accounted for 44% of e-commerce revenues by 2023.

Creating your own mobile application is therefore an excellent way of differentiating yourself from your competitors and attracting an audience that buys mainly or even exclusively via a smartphone. But this new acquisition and loyalty channel means that you need to adapt the shopping journey and offer a unique experience, different from the web and retail.

In this article, we present some practical advice and inspiring examples of how to boost your in-app sales.

SUMMARY

• L’achat in app c’est quoi ?
• How in-app competitions can influence users’ purchasing behaviour
• Tips and examples for boosting in-app purchases through gamification

As the name suggests, in-app purchases are simply transactions carried out via an e-commerce application In the early days of mobile technology, the vast majority of these transactions were purchases of :

• features (such as new filters for a photo editing application);
• or consumables in a mobile video game (such as extra lives or accessories to boost your avatar’s powers).

But with the ever-increasing use of mobile shopping (smartphones and tablets), brands have started to develop their own shopping applications. In-app purchasing offers many advantages for e-commerce companies.

By encouraging consumers to download a dedicated application, they create a much closer relationship with their audience. L’application leur permet en effet d’envoyer à ses clients des SMS, des notifications push, etc.

But above all, it’s an excellent way of creating a much more immersive bubble. With a web browser, it’s much easier for customers to leave the shop, for example to compare the brand’s offer with that of competitors.

Whether in retail, on the web or in mobile marketing, gamification offers brands a wide range of tools for capturing the attention, engaging and retaining the loyalty of consumers. Brands that want to boost in-app purchases can use the mechanics specific to the world of games at every stage of the customer journey.

To boost app downloads and drive buyers to the app

The first challenge for brands looking to boost their in-app sales is quite simply to increase the number of downloads. This can be achieved through a number of different strategies. App-Store Optimization (or ASO), for example, involves optimizing content so that the application is promoted on the dedicated shops (Play Store, App Store, etc.).

Brands can also offer attractive benefits to their prospects or customers to encourage them to buy in app. For example, downloading the app will entitle them to a discount voucher on their first purchase, a selection of exclusive products or lower delivery charges than on the e-commerce shop.

Marketing competitions are also an excellent way of raising awareness of your application and encourage its audience to download it. A winning instant (such as a Wheel of fortune for example) can enable the brand to encourage its customers to make their first in-app purchase. The prize will take the form of a voucher that can only be used on the app.

Building customer loyalty in app

Once the application has been downloaded, the next step is to encourage users to make their first in-app order. As we’ve seen, offering a discount after each new download, which can only be used on the first mobile purchase, is already a good conversion driver.

But the brand can also target other relevant triggers to convince users when they are about to buy. These might include the first product selected or a shopping basket abandonment (the customer leaves the application without purchasing the items they have selected).

For each of these pre-determined actions, the company can automatically send an in-app message or SMS that redirects to a marketing game encouraging the customer to validate their order in exchange for benefits (discount, access to the VIP club, etc.)

Playable marketing is also proving highly effective in retaining new in-app buyers. It allows a game to be shared directly in the application’s purchase path, without any redirection. This is a crucial factor in boosting brand sales. In fact, a study shows that mobile users make 37% more purchases than other customers (e-commerce and retail).

Competitions with a purchase obligation or reserved for loyalty programme members are a good way of encouraging repeat orders. By activating the reward circuit, gamification mechanisms make shoppers want to continue consuming in order to reap new and ever more attractive benefits.

We have just seen that playable marketing is an effective strategy for increasing sales. To achieve its commercial objectives, the brand can draw on the best practices of companies that have succeeded in optimise their mobile marketing.

Using transactional data to personalise the in-app shopping experience

As with any sales channel, personalisation is now a key driver of conversion and loyalty for brands. They need to adapt their purchasing path from the behavioural and transactional data they have on their customers. With this information, they can make more targeted recommendations, present more relevant content, and so on.

Supermarket giant Lidl has understood this perfectly well, and has integrated it into its in-app purchase strategy. The Lidl Plus application enables the company to centralise customer purchasing data. Users can find their till receipts, making it easier to monitor their budget. The brand, for its part, is boosting its in-app purchases by offering discount coupons based on the consumption habits of each customer.

Lidl is going a step further by using this customer data to personalise the gaming experience. Based on in-store purchases, users can access tailored games and rewards. As a result, the application has over 5 million active users and records millions of games played every week.

Offer games with an obligation to buy or accessible based on a volume of points

As we saw a moment ago, Playable marketing is a good way of building customer loyalty, whatever the channel used. Within an application and with the aim of increasing its re-purchase rate, the brand can simply make its interactive experiences accessible only to customers who have have already made an in-app purchase or have accumulated a certain number of loyalty points.

This is the strategy adopted by Coca Cola for its mobile application. To be eligible for attractive prizes (such as tickets to a football match), mobile customers must have accumulated 100 loyalty points.

The same goes for Fuzz Tea, which launched a competition with an obligation to buy. To take part, the brand’s customers had to enter the code shown on their receipt.

Conclusion

Gamification is an effective way of influencing consumer behaviour in a fun and subtle way. Your brand can use this lever to boost the number of downloads of its application and its volume of in-app sales. Find out how Adictiz can help you gamify your in-app journey.

A brand that can maintain its profitability over the long term is a brand that knows how to engage its customers. Engagement (i.e. the depth, quality and frequency of interactions between a company and its audience) is the primary indicator of commercial performance.

It’s engagement that boosts a brand’s visibility, converts prospects into customers and, above all, builds loyalty. Engaged customers (particularly through gamification mechanisms) are more likely to buy regularly from the same brand, recommend it to friends and family, etc.

To activate the neurons in our brains and engage their customers effectively, brands can rely on Playable Marketing. By taking up the elements traditionally associated with games (points, competition, progression from one level to the next), brands can optimise the purchasing journey and boost their revenue.

In this article, we explain how you can make the most of the advantages of playable marketing at every stage of your customer journey!

SUMMARY

• What is playable marketign and what impact does it have on buyers?
• Creating an engagement loop through gamification
• Best practices for designing a gamified shopping experience
  

Whether in education, healthcare or marketing, organisations are all looking for effective tools to capture and maintain the attention of their audience. Gamifying the way they speak to their audiences is a highly relevant strategy for achieving this objective.

Why ? It’s all in our brains. Lors de la phase de découverte, lorsqu’un consommateur commence à se familiariser avec une nouvelle marque, les éléments empruntés au jeu permettent par exemple d’améliorer la rétention d’information.

Neuroscience has shown that gamification acts as a catalyst for hippocampal memory, which encourage the store of new data in long-term memory. We also know that our brains are more likely to retain information when it is associated with positive experiences.

During the consideration phase, when consumers are comparing a brand’s offer with that of its competitors, gamification can play the role of a differentiating element. The fun aspect, as well as the opportunity to unlock rewards, strengthens customer commitment and encourages them to make a purchase.

In fact, Gamification releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that creates positive associations when we win something or achieve a goal. The feeling of happiness and satisfaction increases. We are therefore much more motivated to buy from a brand that offers a gamified buying experience. Playable marketing is therefore a powerful loyalty-building lever .

By increasing the number of interactions between the customer and the company, gamified marketing campaigns also enable more comprehensive data to be collected. This information gives the brand a much more detailed understanding of the needs, preferences and motivations of its audience. The brand can use this information to optimise the buying process, improve the customer experience and even perfect its products.

One of the key mechanisms in gamification is the engagement loop. Les utilisateurs sont motivés à effectuer une action (e.g subscribing to a newsletter, buying a new product or leaving a review) because this action unlocks a reward. With each new action, customers can access even more interesting prizes. This strengthens their bond with the brand and their feeling of belonging to its community. Gamification also activates the reward circuit. it makes customers want to prolong their interaction with the brand (in particular by continuing to consume) in order to conitnue to reap the benefits.

The reward, but also the recognition offered by the brand (via a badge for its most loyal customers or access to a VIP club) becomes a motivating factor in itself. And the commitment loop starts all over again.

This is why Playable marketing is not just about converting new customers. More importantly, it builds loyamty among customers who have already bought from the brand and boosts their Lifetime Value. brands that make good use of gamification to optimise their customer experience and their buying journey will see their incomes increase significantly.

For example, with its gamified application Run Club, Nike has increased its cusotmers’ sense of belonging. It encourages more frequent interactions and a higher re-pruchase rate. The same goes for Starbucks, whose loyalty program consists of accumulating points to move up to higher levels. This program has generated 40% of the company’s revenues and a 7% increase in sales in 2019.

Interactive marketing formats and the gamification of marketing content enable companies to optimise their purchasing paths. However, simply introducing game elements is not enough to move a prospect up the conversion funnel.

Here are the best practices to keep in mind to maximise conversions thanks to Playable marketing.

Getting to know your customers

The first step in designing a gamified shopping experience is to understand your target audience, what they are looking for and what motivates them. This in-depth knowledge is facilitated precisely by gamification (as a tool for data collection and enrichment)). Les marques peuvent en effet récolter des données qualifiées issues de formulaires de participation, ou directement via l’expérience de jeu (par exemple en faisant choisir à son audience son produit préféré etc)

Using the data at its disposal, the company will be able to adapt its interactive animations to the needs of its customers. It’s also a good time to segment the data collected in order to personalise and boost the performance of its campaigns .

Setting clear objectives

The brand will then need to determine which stage of the purchaising journey it wishes to reinforce. It is moe relevant and affordable to determine the strategic contact points where gamification will enable the company to boost its results.

Depending on which part of the conversion funnel is most problematic (awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty), the company can determine which marketing games to offer and when.

Incorporate relevant game elements for each stage of the customer journey

When a brand adds gamified elements to its shopping journey, it is crucial that they make sense in the context of the customer experience. For example, introducing a points and reward system is relevant in the post-purchase phase to build consumer loyalty.

On the other hand, interactive formats such as competitions and instant wins are more effective at the moment of discovery and consideration.They will help to boost brand visibility and convert new prospects more effectively.

Enhancing the added value of gamified elements

The final step is to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of gamification of the pruchasing journey. Tracking precise metrics (conversion, lead generation, retetention) will enable the company to optimise its shopping experience and achieve its objectives.

Conclusion

By following these best practices, you can create a gamified customer experience that is both more engaging for your customers and more effective for your brand. We provide a complete catalogue of interactive formats to target buyers at every stage of your customer journey. Whether you want to engage your audience, convert prospects or build customer loyalty you’ll find a gamified animation to meet your needs!

Consumer habits have changed, particularly with the spread of e-commerce and the increase in online sales. The way in which brands reach, engage and retain their customers must therefore adapt to these new practices. One of the most crucial challenges for companies is to increase in-store traffic, in particular through drive to store campaigns.

These are an integral part of the harmonisation of the online and offline shopping journeys. In an increasingly omnichannel world, brands need to be able to engage and convert customers both in-store and online.

In this article, we present the 4 most effective strategies for attracting consumers to your shops and converting them into loyal customers.

SUMMARY

• What is drive to store in marketing?
• What are the most effective strategies for a drive-to-store campaign?
• Best practice for a successful drive to store campaign

Drive-to-store is a set of marketing strategies designed to attract online customers to physical shops. It’s an omnichannel approach that combines consumer geolocation, recommendation of the nearest point of sale and optimisation of the retail experience.

While consumer habits have tended to go digital during the pandemic, in-store shopping is not yet a thing of the past. Customers continue to embrace the retail experience, whether to discover the world of a brand, test its products, or return or exchange an order placed online.

Drive to store is therefore a central element of modern marketing, and this despite the fact that 62% of consumers say they will refuse to buy from a brand if it has no online presence. The discovery stage is increasingly carried out via digital channels, but physical purchasing has not said its last word.

A recent study shows that 72% of people who carry out a local search online will go to a shop located less than 8 kilometres away of their current location. This underlines the importance of an active online presence in redirecting qualified prospects to your points of sale.

What’s more, 28% of all local searches result in a purchase. A comprehensive omnichannel promotional campaign – one that harnesses the power of multiple channels – can help businesses attract visitors to their physical shops and generate more retail conversions.

An effective drive-in-store campaign therefore involves using a mix of digital and physical tools to attract and convert customers in-store. Here are the most effective ways of achieving this.

1. Localised advertising campaigns

The particularity of Drive to Store is that, to be effective, this marketing strategy needs to target consumers who live or are located close to a point of sale. Qualifying prospects is therefore a crucial element in maximising the ROI of your media budget.

A good way of achieving this is to display your ads to a geolocalised audience near a physical shop. Social networks such as Facebook, for example, have developed advertising targeting tools specifically for Drive to store. This is the case with Meta’s Store Traffic objective, which redirects users from an advertising insert to a physical point of sale.

Referencing your shops on Google Maps is another essential lever in any successful drive-to-store strategy. 86% of consumers use Google Maps to find local businesses.

2. Offer Click & Collect

The Click&Collect principle is simple. It consists of offering customers collect their online order from the nearest shop. The main advantage of this strategy is that it offers an alternative to home deliveries, which can occur when the customer is not at home. It is also a good way for consumers to save on postage costs.

For the brand, encouraging a customer who has already been won over (because they have just bought from the brand) in-store is beneficial in a number of ways. It’s an opportunity to strengthen its links with the company by immersing them in their world. This approach can also play a part in the post-purchase conversion strategy by recommending complementary offers to customers in shop.

3. Offer exceptional discounts to in-store customers

Offering exclusive discounts to consumers in-store is a simple but effective way of boosting your drive-to-store strategy.. Les soldes disponibles uniquement en retail, mais aussi les opérations de déstockage sont d’excellents leviers pour attirer ses clients dans un point de vente physique.

4. Gamification to maximise in-store conversions

Playable marketing is another excellent way of attracting consumers to the shop, but also to convert them. Broadcast online, an interactive game can, for example, enable participants to win discount or purchase vouchers that are only valid in-store.

But gamification can also be used as a lever for visibility and conversion in a physical point of sale. Whether in the form of a digital interactive terminal or tablets available at the checkout, these phygital devices make the in-store experience more attractive and fun.

Here again, it’s the opportunity to win rewards via an in-store competition that will encourage consumers to enter the point of sale and interact with the brand. Not to mention that, for the brand, it’s an excellent way of collect qualified data. It will then be able to use this data to optimise its future digital drive-to-store campaigns.

Let’s move on to the practical side. To boost the impact of a Drive to Store strategy, here’s some advice to apply before, during and after the campaign.

Before the campaign

• Targeting the right audiences based on their geolocation to boost its conversion rate. Brands should start by drawing up a list of their points of sale so that they can target the right audience. Note that it is important to consider a radius that encompasses a reasonable walking or driving time.
• Use attractive creative formats to capture consumers’ attention. Providing relevant information from the nearest shop also boosts the impact of the Drive to store campaign.
• Define the right attribution window (i.e. the length of the period taken into account before conversion, during which the contribution of marketing contact points is collected and analysed). A window of between 15 and 30 days, for example, enables you to monitor footfall in your shops and therefore focus on the most effective advertising channels.

During the campaign

Dive into granular reports. The success of a Drive to Store campaign can mean different things to different advertisers. Granular reporting tools make it possible to drill down into the data that is relevant to the brand, depending on whether it just wants to increase traffic, convert new customers, increase its re-purchase rate, build customer loyalty or build its audience.

After the campaign

Measure conversions in real time. This makes it possible to focus on 3 key KPIs: the improvement factor (i.e. the probability that a visit to a shop is motivated by the Drive to store campaign), the percentage of exposure and, in particular, the percentage of incremental visits.

Conclusion

The Drive to Store strategy is therefore the cornerstone for brands wishing to activate their prospects and customers across all their channels, both digital and physical. One of the most effective tools for strengthening the omnichannel customer journey is gamification. Discover our interactive mechanisms to increase the visibility and appeal of your points of sale.